IS ENGLAND TILTING?

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 16 January 1926, Page 11

IS ENGLAND TILTING?

JpEOM Minelicad, in Somerset, round Lands’ End all the way to Lancing, Sussex, the sea is steadily eating into the shore, and during recent years, according to experts, has lowered the shore level by an average of three feet six inches. In the English Channel, Devon and Dorset have suffered severely, and at Swanage the famous sands have been eaten away to a depth of two feet nine inches for a distance of KJOO yards. This well-known bay, with its wide expanse of golden sands- at all states of the title, has long been known as a children’s paradise, but the sea has been doing its best to rob it of that honour. Hundreds of thousands of tons have been swept away from the south end, and the local council has had to summon expert engineering aid in the hope of arresting the trouble. The cost of the damage of the last 12 months and the remedy now to be adopted of constructing groynes to break the force of the sea is approximately a 2d rate, and there is no one who can say that the problem will even then be solved. Local fishermen who have known and .worked on the coast for very many years declare that the Channel tides are sweeping in with

greater force than ever before, and that nothing can withstand them. Mr D. Lloyd Davies, chairman of the Swanage local authority, says: “We never know what the sea will do next. This last attack on our sea wall cos.t us more than £4OOO. Experts say that the same thing is taking place , all along the coast, but can give no reason for it.” Scientists are not content with the simple explanation contained in. the phrase “sea erosion,” and are recalling the changes which have been recorded in the ocean bed in various parts of the world, and as near as off Cape Finisterrc. Experts in land formation agree that it is by no means certain that the British Tsles are not tilting, that certain portions along the south coast- are not lower than they were years ago, and have thus become more subject to the ravages of the sea and wind. The work the Ordnance Survey at Southampton is now doing will help decide this point. Another theory advanced is that the level of the sea is altering and that our shores are exposed to extraordinary water strain. Whatever the cause, the people in South Devon and Dorset are seriously alarmed. Their beautiful coast is changing rapidlv; beauty spots have vanished in a night.